“You never said so on the road.”
“I didn’t feel this way on the road,” Lynn countered. “Then we were always moving. If I didn’t like something it didn’t matter, ’cause it’d be different the next day.”
“What are you saying to me?”
Lynn was quiet, and Lucy counted seven revolutions of the tide before she spoke.
“I’m going home.”
Even though she’d been expecting it, Lucy cried out, burying her head into her hands and sinking her fingers into her own hair as if covering her ears could force the words out of her mind. “Don’t do that to me, Lynn. I can’t do it—I’m not like you!”
“Not like me?” Lynn asked, her hands probing into the mess of Lucy’s hair and finding her fingertips, pulling the girl’s face up to look into her own. “Now who would want to be that, anyway?”
“Me,” Lucy said desperately through her tears, “me, me, me.”
Lynn pulled Lucy to her, wrapping her arms around the girl who refused to be a woman. “Don’t you see it, little one? You’re where you belong now, next to the biggest thing in the world and loving every second of it. The people here are hopeful, with a spark of life about them, just like you. It’s not like the city behind us, where they were living off the dead. These people are alive for the love of it.”
“And you don’t like that? How can you not, Lynn?”
“Oh, I envy them, through and through, don’t get me wrong on that point. But I learned hard lessons long ago, and they’re so ingrained in me I can’t drop ’em now. Like it or not, I’ve picked up the knack of feeling responsible for others, and you don’t need me anymore. There are those back home who still might. Last time I saw Stebbs, his finger was none too steady on the trigger.”
“I do need you, I do,” Lucy cried, clinging to her. She buried her face into Lynn’s neck and made her confession. “I’m like my mother. I need other people, and you most of all.”
Lynn pushed Lucy’s face back from her own and looked at her in the moonlight. “You’re not me, child. You’re not me and you’re not your mother either. You’re Lucy, my little one, and that is no small thing.”
And Lucy cried as the tide came in, her salty tears making the ocean bigger.
Epilogue
Lynn waited until spring to go. It was close to a year since they’d left Ohio when Lynn stood on the outskirts of town, holding the reins of a horse that had been given to her by a rancher in thanks for having shot the mountain lion depleting his sheep. Her rifle was strapped to her back, a heavily penciled map in her pack, and enough bottles of fresh water to keep her on the road for a while before she would have to refill.
Lucy stood beside her with clear eyes but dried tear tracks on her face.
“You sure about this?” Lucy asked, even though every line of Lynn’s body ached with her need to go home.
“You know I am,” Lynn answered, giving Lucy a hug. “And don’t be so sad-faced about it. Dan planned a route for me that goes south before east. He said it’ll keep me as low as possible, so no worries on the nosebleeds.” She swung up into the saddle and cleared her throat. “I don’t know what else to say. I’m ready to go, but leaving you is tearing a Lucy-shaped hole in my heart. Don’t think anybody else can ever fill it.”
“I know it,” Lucy said, her hand reaching up for Lynn’s. “But I’ll be all right here. Stebbs and Vera need to know we made it. You tell . . .” Lucy swallowed hard, having promised herself she was done crying. “You tell my grandma I love her, and that I’m happy.”
Lynn sighed. “This caring about people is for the birds. ’Specially when they gotta live so far apart from each other.”
Lucy swiped at her eyes. “What do you want me to tell Fletcher, should he show up?”
Lynn shrugged. “He knows where Ohio is.”
“The way he was making eyes at you on the road, I wouldn’t be surprised if he accidentally crosses your path before you get there.”
“My luck I’ll find his wife instead.”
Lucy smiled, shaking her head. “You’re a hell of a woman, Lynn.”
Lynn reached down to touch the crown of her bright-yellow head. “You’re a hell of woman too, Lucy.”
She kicked her horse and was gone, a trail of dust marking the beginning of a long path she was willing to travel again, if her pond lay at the end. And the sun rose higher, warming Lucy’s face and reflecting off the ocean into a million points of light.